Paleontologists said Wednesday they have found small blades in a South African cave proving that Man was an advanced thinker making stone tools 71,000 years ago -- millennia earlier than thought.

The find suggests early humans from Africa had a capacity for complex thought and weapons production that gave them a distinct evolutionary advantage over Neanderthals, say the authors of a study published in Nature.

Researchers from Australia and Saudi Arabia launched a project Thursday which they hope will help them understand the genetic makeup of corals and how they react to climate change.

Reefs around the world are under threat from bleaching due to climate change, as well as storms and predatory starfish, and scientists want to learn more about coral resilience to help head off further destruction.

The remote Pacific islands of Tokelau have become the first territory in the world to generate their electricity entirely from solar energy, in a project hailed as an environmental milestone.

Before the solar power grid was completed, the New Zealand-administered grouping of three coral atolls, with a population of just 1,500, relied on diesel generators for electricity.

A near-complete skeleton of a mammoth which lived between 200,000 and 500,000 years ago has been found near Paris, the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research said Tuesday.

The remains were discovered at Changis-sur-Marne, northeast of Paris. They included a femur, a complete pelvis, jawbones and four connected vertebrae.

House finches avoid sick members of their own species, scientists said Wednesday in a finding that could be useful for tracking the spread of diseases like bird flu that also affects humans.

Laboratory tests showed that the house finch, a particularly social North American species, was able to tell the difference between sick and healthy fellow birds and tended to avoid those that were unwell.

The spade-toothed beaked whale is so rare that nobody has seen one alive, but scientists have proof the species still exists.

Two skeletons were identified as belonging to the species after a 17-foot whale and her calf beached themselves in New Zealand in 2010. Scientists hope the discovery will provide insights into the species and into ocean ecosystems.

Greek, British and Israeli scientists on Monday received the European Commission's first Marie Curie prizes for scientific research, a statement said.

In the category of "promising research talent", Gkikas Magiorkinis of Greece was rewarded for his work on tracing how the Hepatitis C virus has spread around the world.

Anti-whaling activists began their annual campaign against Japanese whalers Monday with the Sea Shepherd's flagship, the Steve Irwin, leaving its Melbourne dock to pursue the harpoonists.

The group's ninth campaign, named Operation Zero Tolerance, is its largest against Japan's whale hunt and involves four ships, a helicopter, three drones and more than 100 crew members.

Accompanied by a fleet of astronauts spanning NASA's entire existence, Atlantis made a slow, solemn journey to retirement Friday, the last space shuttle to orbit the world and the last to leave NASA's nest.

Atlantis reached its new home at the Kennedy Space Center's main tourist stop close to sundown, after a one-way road trip that spanned nearly 12 hours.

Brazil's Salto Morato Nature Preserve is a haven for scientists studying the dwindling Atlantic rainforest, an area less renowned than the Amazon forest but just as biologically diverse and equally threatened by human encroachment.

The preserve in Guaraquecaba, in the southeastern state of Parana, covers a corner of what was once a huge littoral rainforest known as the Mata Atlantica.